Hotels are one of the oldest and most common forms of business enterprise in rural Saskatchewan. The fact that Saskatchewan’s tenacious old hotels still stand on the corners of Railway and Main is a testament to the determination of the people who have owned and operated them over the past 100 years - and to the fact that they haven't burned down!

Saturday, 4 January 2014

NOTE: As a historian, I have attempted to remain as objective as possible in the writing of this blog post. This article does not imply approval of strip-tease in Saskatchewan bars on my part.As reported in an earlier blog post here, the Saskatchewan government recently made 70 changes to the
provincial liquor laws. One of these
changes, which came into effect on January 1, 2014, included “allowing strip-tease
performances and wet clothing contests in adult-only liquor-permitted premises."

The first venue in the province to feature
strip-tease entertainment was reported to be the bar in a small-town hotel at Codette, a village near Nipawin,
260 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon.“I
believe we are the first legal, licensed strip bar,” Bryan Baranski, co-owner of
the newly renovated Codette Hotel, told paNOW. “I know the younger guys are all excited about
it in the area.” Source

The Codette Hotel was shut down for about two years. Baraniski,
who already owned a hotel at Tobin Lake, was initially hesitant about buying the hotel in Codette. He and his partner kept a close eye on the liquor laws, and when the
changes were announced in November of 2012, they made the decision to buy the
hotel and turn it into a stripper bar.

Baraniski noted in media interviews that, because the hotel bar had been closed
for a couple of years, there was no danger of upsetting existing customers with
the new, exotic entertainment. Sources here and here.

The first stripper show at the Codette Hotel and Bar was
held on January 2, 2014. Baraniski brought in two strippers from Regina. The $10 cover charge included one drink. “We
had a full house. Everyone had a good time,” he told the Saskatoon StarPhoenix regarding the inaugural
performance at the old hotel. The bar was filled to its 90-seat capacity by 9 p.m.,
with customers coming from as far away as Prince Albert, 150 km southwest of
the village. “It's just a different sort of entertainment,” Baraniski said. “We
used to bring in bands and now we're bringing strippers instead of bands.” Source

The Codette Hotel booked strippers from Regina thee nights every second
weekend.Baraniski, who has been in the bar business
for around 20 years, expected it would take a few months to determine if the shows
are successful, or if they would be a short-lived novelty. “It will be good for
the first couple of years and then I think it will kind of just go away by the
wayside,” he predicted.Source

Peeling Repealed

On March 25, 2015, Brad Wall, Premier of Saskatchewan, announced that the province was taking back
the part of the new liquor laws that allowed stripping in
places where alcohol is served.

"I'd like to confirm that I believe that the government of Saskatchewan
made a mistake last year when we allowed licensed strip clubs in the
province," Wall stated. "I made a mistake and so I'm announcing today that we're
reversing that decision." Source

Don Verstraeten, owner of the Codette Hotel, expressed shock at Premier Wall's decision. “People make special trips - like we have bus loads of people coming in
from all the little towns around because this is kind of the hub," he said in an interview. "It
still hasn’t lost the original impact - it is still going great." Source

Wednesday, 1 January 2014

The 100-room Royal Hotel in Weyburn has been
struck by misfortune several times since it was built in 1900, but none worse than
the tragedy that occurred in 1917 – a tragedy that continues to defy
understanding.On April 14th
of that year, two Saskatchewan doctors died within hours of each other from
poisoning after drinking wood (methyl) alcohol. For more information, click here and here.

On April 13th, Dr. Harry E. Hamill, a
32-year-old physician from Assiniboia brought one of his patients to the Weyburn hospital,
and then checked into the Royal Hotel.There he met Dr. Neil Roy Stewart, 28 years old. Formerly practicing at Eastend, Saskatchewan, Stewart had recently served overseas as a medical officer for the
249th Battalion during the First World War.That evening, as they sat having dinner in the hotel's café, the two doctors were overheard having a prolonged argument about the effects of wood alcohol on the human
body.For some reason, the two decided
to drink the stuff.Both died of
poisoning in their respective rooms at the Royal several hours later.

Dr. Hamill had obtained what
was known as Columbian Spirits (methyl or wood alcohol) from the night nurse at
the Weyburn hospital in the early morning hours of April 13th, saying
that it was for external application for his wife (who was at home in
Assiniboia).

That two trained physicians
would take such a risk is astounding.In
1917, the effects of ingesting wood alcohol were well known to the medical
community, and beyond.There had been
hundreds of documented cases of poisoning resulting from drinking this
substance.(For another account of
deaths in Saskatchewan caused by drinking wood alcohol, see my blog post, "Tragedy at Blaine Lake: The Commercial Hotel" here.) Several studies, including Dr.
Casey A. Wood’s “Death and Blindness as a Result of Poisoning by Methyl or
Wood, Alcohol, and its Various Preparations,”1906, clearly outlined the dangers of ingesting or inhaling wood alcohol.Read it here. (Article republished as a 15-page booklet in
1912 by the American Medical Association.) Symptoms included vomiting and loss of
vision, followed by lapsing into a coma. Death occured within 24 hours.

Wood alcohol was developed
for a wide variety of industrial uses, including as a wood varnish. At the turn of the 20th century, a
refined grade of methyl alcohol was developed for therapeutic rubbing purposes.The purification process made the smell and
taste more agreeable, but did not minimize the deadly effect of the poison. Manufacturers gave fancy names to the
product, such as “Columbian Spirits,” Eagle Spirits,” or, for the lumbermen of
the Northwest and Canada, the poetic designation of “Greenwood Spirits.” It
did not help that the packaging of these products often resembled liquor
bottles.

The Doctors

Not much is known about the two doctors who drank, and died from, this poison. The newspapers reported that the jury "returned a plain verdict that the men came to their death from drinking wood alcohol with no qualification or comment as to whether the act was done with intent or unknowingly." Source

Dr. Hamill and daughter Elsie, Colgate, 1913

Harry Hamill was born 29
March 1884 in Meaford, Ontario. He graduated from medical school at the
University of Toronto in 1908, and married Pearl McLaughlin two years later.Dr.
Hamill was the first resident doctor for the village of Colgate, Saskatchwan between 1912 and 1913.Harry and Pearl had a daughter, Elsie, born in
Colgate in 1912.(Pearl went on to marry Harold Jenkins in 1922 and had
another daughter, Patsy.) Source: Prairie Gold: R. M. of Lomond #37 [including Colgate SK], 1980, pp. 189, 414.

Dr. Neil Roy Stewart was born in 1889 in Emerson, Manitoba. He served as the physician at Eastend before enlisting in the Canadian Armed Forces on February 1, 1917, only a few months before his death. At the time of his enlistment, he named his next of kin as his father, W. B. Stewart of Weyburn. Unmarried, Dr. Sewart had practiced at Eastend.He went
overseas for a very short time - perhaps only a month - as a medical officer during the First World War.According to the Eastend history book, Dr.
Stewart had apparently been granted leave to return and "cover his own district." Source: Range Riders and Sodbusters, Eastend Historical Society, 1980. Stewart's military records do not shed any light on the reasons for his abrupt return to Canada from overseas. Source: Library and Archives Canada, RG 150, Accession 1992-93/166, Box 9320 - 40.

A number of questions come to mind. Did Dr. Hamill and Dr. Stewart know each other before they met at the Royal Hotel on that fateful night? Why did Dr. Stewart return from WWI after such a short time overseas? Was the drinking of wood alcohol premeditated? Were the two men on a drinking binge, and if so, would the night nurse at the Weyburn hospital give a bottle of Columbian Spirits to a drunk doctor - ostensibly for his wife? Perhaps.

The alcohol part is a bit easier to figure out. Prohibition was in full force in Saskatchewan in 1917. The only way to acquire booze was from a bootlegger (who often spiked his brew with wood alcohol), or by a doctor's prescription. If a physician was an alcoholic, or if he was battling other demons, wood alcohol might have been tempting, but surely he would have had access to safer sources of liquor through his profession.

History of the Royal Hotel

The first section of the
Royal Hotel was under construction by William Fisher in August of 1900, when seven
inches of rain flooded the town, leaving the building in ruins.The foundations were undermined by the flood waters, and the stone
walls collapsed into the cellar.Fisher
sold the ruins to to Dan Pretty who rebuilt the hotel on the same site. Source: Isabel
Eaglesham, The Night the Cat Froze in the
Oven; A History of Weyburn and Its People. Weyburn: Weyburn Review Ltd.,
1963; 1970.

By February 1902, things were
off to such a good start at the Royal Hotel that owners Tom Robinson and his
brother-in-law Harry Walsh held a ball to celebrate.“The attractive dining room was specially
prepared for dancing, being well lighted and having the floor waxed to
perfection,” the Regina Leader
reported. “An elegant repast was served at midnight and dancing kept up until
daylight.”It was deemed one of the most
pleasing social events which had ever taken place in Weyburn. Source

In 1912, the Royal Hotel’s
future looked so bright that the McRoberts brothers, formerly of Moose Jaw,
purchased it for the princely sum of $175,000.Source: Financial Post of Canada, November 30, 1912. The McRoberts had big plans for the Royal, only to have them dashed when
Prohibition was introduced in 1915.When
the Canada Census was taken in 1916, J. L. (Jerry) McRoberts and his wife Lucia
(Lucy), ages 60 and 39 respectively, were living in the hotel along with their
children Ruth (17) and Jerry Jr. (9).In
spite of the devastating impact that Prohibition had on many Saskatchewan
hotels, the Royal must have been doing alright, as, according to the census, it
had fifteen staff members, including four chambermaids, two waitresses, two Chinese
cooks, a waiter, a Japanese porter, two Japanese bell boys, a dishwasher, a cashier, and a
bookkeeper.

The Governor General of
Canada, Duke of Devonshire, visited Weyburn in September of 1918. Luncheon was
served at the Royal Hotel where Lucy McRoberts was a “very gracious hostess.”Mrs. McRoberts sold the hotel to Wilbur
Thompson, who then sold it to Alexander Mrygold and his three sons, Joseph
(Joe) Mike and William (Bill) in 1948.The
Mrygolds, natives of Austria, arrived in Weyburn in 1910. The family operated
the Royal Hotel throughout the 1950s and 1960s, selling it in 1971 to Harry and Irene Winckless from Manitoba.

The Mryglods spent a great
deal of time and money renovating the Royal Hotel. In 1953, they completely remodeled the large
lobby. The hotel was the largest in the city, with 100 rooms.In addition to hotel services, the Royal also
housed 25 to 30 permanent residents in rooms and suites.A number of business places, including several
oil exploration companies, had office space on the premises. Source

Fire of 1954

Misfortune struck the Royal Hotel
again in 1954 when a fire of unknown origin caused $146,000 damage. The fire
occurred just as the Mrygolds were finishing a complete renovation
project.Only two rooms in the entire
hotel had not been rebuilt when the fire struck.

The fire started in a room on
the top floor of the 3-storey stone structure and spread quickly into the attic
and from there throughout the entire building.Initially, hotel staff attempted to put out the fire with hoses stored
in the hotel.Eventually, firefighters
managed to extinguish the blaze, but not before four members of the volunteer
fire brigade were injured in the seven-hour long battle against the
flames.

The Saskatoon StarPhoenix reported that, according to eyewitness
Murphy Polsky, a travelling salesman from Winnipeg, "there was no panic when the fire broke out.
There were few people in the building since many were attending an exhibition
hockey game being played at the time. Mr. Polsky said he was just going back
into the hotel when he saw a woman come down the stairs to give the alarm. He
said this was the second time in a week that he had been staying at a hotel in
Saskatchewan that had caught fire. He was registered at the Kings Hotel in
Shaunavon last Thursday when he was routed from his bed by the blaze. ‘Once
more,’ said the Winnipeg traveler, ‘and I’m going to quit.’" Source

About Me

One of my favorite activities was traveling around the southern half of Saskatchewan with my digital camera. My favorite photo subjects were old small-town hotels. I am the former the Executive Director of the Saskatchewan Western Development Museum.

Acknowledgements

I could not write this blog without the local history books from all the little villages and towns throughout the province. I am indebted to the web site, Our Roots, for digitizing many Saskatchewan local history books, and to the libraries that preserve these rich resources on their book shelves.

I am sorry that Google News Archives is no longer searchable. It still provides free access to scanned newspapers, including full issues of the major Saskatchewan papers, going back to the 1800s, but it no longer has a search engine. You have to browse, which is not really practical for my research purposes.

“I stayed in a really old hotel last night. They sent me a wake-up letter.”